The Mutiny That Started With the Epstein Vote

When your Speaker thinks women’s brains are spaghetti, don’t be surprised when they’re the ones who finally flip the table.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

There’s a particular kind of irony that hits you when you hear Republican women complaining about Speaker Mike Johnson — a man who has literally said he believes men and women have different brains. According to the Johnsons, men’s minds are neat little waffle compartments, while women’s brains are… a messy bowl of spaghetti.

“Men can compartmentalize things,” Johnson once said.

“But women, we cannot do that. We are always thinking. In fact, our brains are like spaghetti,” his wife Kelly added.

Yes, that is the woman he married. And yes, he nodded along.

Johnson is an evangelical who openly embraces traditional gender roles, which might explain why the only person in the Republican conference that he would trust to cook his turkey dinner is the only woman in GOP House leadership, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) It might also explain why there is only one woman in leadership at all.

I love when Republican women accidentally slip into feminist rhetoric. But honestly, how could they not? They’re the ones schlepping to Washington every week, juggling families, flights, and the chaos of a conference that is constantly being pushed around by President Trump. And now, after months of dysfunction, shutdown brinkmanship, and an early recess that left members idle with nothing to take home to their constituents, the grumbling has turned into a full-blown revolt — led by the women.

Because what, exactly, do they have to show? As the New York Times’ Annie Karni smartly points out on The Tara Palmeri Show, Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House… and still have very little to point to in terms of legislation. Instead, they look like a bunch of squishes, bending to Trump, on the universally popular Epstein Files Transparency vote. And really, who in America is against accountability for crimes against children?

Add on the affordability crisis that Republicans have no coherent answer for (Trump has literally called the issue a “hoax”) and dire polling from Trump’s favorite pollster, Tony Fabrizio, showing consequences for letting Obamacare subsidies lapse… and you can see why the conference feels like it’s unraveling. Fabrizio’s latest advice: “change the subject and pivot to reducing drug prices,” according to POLITICO.

So is it any wonder Republican women are leading the mutiny?

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Harvard-educated, aggressively ambitious, once imagining herself a future vice president, is now publicly calling Johnson a “habitual liar.” One can only imagine how she feels about being dismissed by someone who seemed to materialize out of nowhere and has shown minimal ability to manage his own conference.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) posed for Karni’s latest piece the Times, making his disgust over Johnson’s role in California’s redistricting battles crystal clear. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has gone after him too over the way he treats women. And Marjorie Taylor Greene torched him as a “weak man” on her way out.

What do they have to lose? Stefanik is running for governor of New York. Mace is running for governor South Carolina. Greene is already out. Kiley will likely be out next year. When you’re eyeing the exit, candor comes cheap.

But the fact that they’re willing to put their names on criticism this far from the midterms is what’s truly striking. Normally, this kind of anger starts as a background whisper. Not this time. They’re saying the quiet part out loud. That tells me they already think Johnson is a dead man walking.

Karni summed it up well: Republicans eat their own. Their speakers have the shortest half-life in Washington. This isn’t Nancy Pelosi territory; she ruled with an iron fist for two decades. Even Democrats who grumble about Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ communication skills keep their complaints to a low background hum. You don’t see on-the-record revolt.

“Most people think Johnson won’t last the term — either he’s ousted or they lose the majority,” Karni told me. “Right now, I still think it’s more likely the latter. And Trump is a huge factor.”

Because, as with everything these days, it all circles back to Epstein.

“The floodgates have really opened since the Epstein vote,” Karni said. “People are on the record lashing out at him. And Trump reads the news. He doesn’t like weakness.”

In other words: When even the GOP women, the ones expected to quietly “compartmentalize” like waffle-mimicking men, start sounding like mutineers, you know the spaghetti has officially hit the fan.